In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth)
- Special Exhibition
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
Featured Art
About The Exhibition
For millennia, wine has played a significant role not only in the human diet but also in cultural myths, rituals, and festivities. As a result, wine—its ingredients, making, drinking, and effects on the human body and mind—has been a constant muse for artistic creation. The exhibition In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth), a phrase coined by the Roman polymath Pliny the Elder, celebrates the presence and meaning of wine in prints, drawings, textiles, and objects made in Europe between 1450 and 1800. Drawn from the museum’s collection, more than 70 works by artists from throughout Europe explore wine’s myths, symbols, and stories. These images reveal how diverse cultures and religions ascribed meaning and transformational properties to the so-called nectar of the gods.
The ancient Greeks believed that the god Dionysus (in Rome, Bacchus) lived within wine: to drink wine was to partake of the god’s power. Fascinated by ancient culture, Italian Renaissance artists, such as Andrea Mantegna and Raphael, imagined scenes of boisterous festivals, or bacchanalia, along with the exploits of Bacchus and his coterie of satyrs, nymphs, and fauns. In Northern Europe, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and later Jean-Honoré Fragonard, transformed bacchanalia into raucous peasant festivals and sensuous garden parties fueled by wine, at times tinged with moral judgment. Simultaneously, wine played a critical allegorical role in images made within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Old Testament and Hebrew Bible traced wine’s invention to Noah. Numerous stories from these texts, portrayed by Lucas van Leyden and others, leveraged wine as an important plot element, with the ability to unify and enlighten, or to incapacitate and deceive. Many artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, used wine, grapes, and the vine to symbolize the Catholic rite of the Eucharist and its origin in Christ’s Last Supper. Throughout the exhibition, wine appears in scenes of devotion, harvest, celebration, music making, and transgression, signaling community cohesion as well as the pleasures—and hazards—of surrendering to one’s senses.
Sponsors
Generous support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson. Major annual support is provided by the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm and the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment. Generous annual support is provided by two anonymous donors, Gini and Randy Barbato, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Gail and Bill Calfee, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Joseph and Susan Corsaro, Ron and Cheryl Davis, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., the estate of Walter and Jean Kalberer, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, the William S. Lipscomb Fund, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Roy Minoff Family Fund, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Dr. Nicholas and Anne Ogan, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, Christine Fae Powell, Michael and Cindy Resch, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, Saundra K. Stemen, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.